Mandarin or Latin?

Mike Salter has drawn my attention to an article from the UK, related to my previous post. Here's a couple of interesting paragraphs:

Hard as it may be to believe, one of the things that gives privately-educated children the edge is their knowledge of Latin. I don’t just mean in the obvious senses – their grasp of basic grammar and syntax, their understanding of the ways in which our world is underpinned by the classical world, their ability to read Latin inscriptions. I mean there is actually a substantial body of evidence that children who study Latin outperform their peers when it comes to reading, reading comprehension and vocabulary, as well as higher order thinking such as computation, concepts and problem solving...

Interestingly, [one study] found that children from poor backgrounds particularly benefit from studying Latin. For a child with limited cultural reference points, becoming acquainted with Roman life and mythology opens up “new symbolic worlds”, enabling him or her “to grow as a personality, to live a richer life”. In addition, spoken Latin emphasises clear pronunciation, particularly of the endings of words, a useful corrective for many children born in inner cities. Finally, for children who have reading problems, Latin provides “experience in careful silent reading of the words that follow a consistent phonetic pattern”...

Unlike other languages, Latin isn’t just about conjugating verbs. It includes a crash course in ancient history and cosmology. “Latin is the maths of the Humanities,” says Llewelyn Morgan, “But Latin also has something that mathematics does not and that is the history and mythology of the ancient world. Latin is maths with goddesses, gladiators and flying horses, or flying children.”

The reference to 'a substantial body of evidence' is fleshed out a little in the actual article.

dico, dico, dico

If you're looking for something to read over the holidays, you could do worse than this article (by Juliette Harrisson), looking at the use of Latin in pop culture. She manages to squeeze in references to Monty Python, Harry Potter, Buffy, Terry Pratchett, Yes Minister, The West Wing, Mel Gibson and others into a very interesting and readable piece. Here's a sample paragraph:

...it is because Latin is more familiar to audiences that it is frequently chosen over other ancient languages when spells or magical incantations are required. This is partly because Latin is so close to a number of modern European languages, so the spells sound ‘right’ – petrificus totalus, for example, ‘petrifies’ someone ‘totally’. Latin is sufficiently old and mysterious and, at the same time, sufficiently recognisable to make an effective magic spell that sounds plausible, yet out of the ordinary.

 

Mezentius and Ajax

A few weeks ago I put up a series of posts comparing some of the language used by Virgil to describe Mezentius to similar scenes from Homer's Iliad. To conclude the series, here's an excerpt from an article I found very interesting, Mezentius: a Virgilian Creation.

In fact, [Mezentius] is a Homeric hero in all essentials. Virgil's great model for his battle scenes was naturally the Iliad. And as he moulded the figure of a great Italian warrior, no doubt he scanned closely the many Achaean chieftains to find a working model for his Mezentius. It could not be Achilles since Turnus was already cast for that role. Besides, Mezentius was not a young, swift-footed hero but the gray-haired father of a full-grown son. After much thought - or was it a sudden flash of inspiration? - he found his man in the Iliad: Ajax of Salamis, son of Telamon.

 

Alexander the Great's Tomb

Here's a trick question for you: where is Alexander the Great buried?

• (a) Macedonia
• (b) Babylon
• (c) Alexandria
• (d) Western Australia

If you answered (a) you probably remembered that Alexander was Macedonian, not Greek as many people think, but sadly that's not the right answer.

If you answered (b) you might know a bit of history, and that Alexander basically drunk himself to death in Babylon after returning from India, but that's not the right answer either.

If you answered (c) congratulations! This is where, according to ancient sources, Alexander's body was taken after he died, but his tomb was later looted by both the Pharoahs and the Romans, and no one is quite sure what happened to his body after that.

If you answered (d)... well I'm not sure what would possess anyone to answer (d), unless of course you read this article recently which suggests just this very thing- that Alexander the Great's final resting place is in a cave near Broome, Western Australia.

Plutarch (writing some 400 years after the event) describes the death of Alexander in Babylon, though he neglects to tell us what happened to the body afterwards.

On the eighteenth of the month, he slept in the bathing-room on account of his fever. The next day he bathed and removed into his chamber, and spent his time in playing dice with Medius. In the evening he bathed and sacrificed, and ate freely, and had the fever on him through the night. On the twentieth, after the usual sacrifices and bathing, he lay in the bathing-room and heard Nearchus’s narrative of his voyage, and the observations he had made in the great sea. The twenty-first he passed in the same manner, his fever still increasing, and suffered much during the night. The next day the fever was very violent, and he had himself removed and his bed set by the great bath, and discoursed with his principal officers about finding fit men to fill up the vacant places in the army. On the twenty-fourth he was much worse, and was carried out of his bed to assist at the sacrifices, and gave order that the general officers should wait within the court, whilst the inferior officers kept watch without doors. On the twenty-fifth he was removed to his palace on the other side the river, where he slept a little, but his fever did not abate, and when the generals came into his chamber, he was speechless, and continued so the following day. The Macedonians, therefore, supposing he was dead, came with great clamors to the gates, and menaced his friends so that they were forced to admit them, and let them all pass through unarmed along by his bedside. The same day Python and Seleucus were dispatched to the temple of Serapis to inquire if they should bring Alexander thither, and were answered by the god, that they should not remove him. On the twenty-eighth, in the evening, he died. This account is most of it word for word as it is written in the diary.

At the time, nobody had any suspicion of his being poisoned, but [some say he was poisoned with] water, deadly cold as ice, distilling from a rock in the district of Nonacris, which they gathered like a thin dew, and kept in an ass’s hoof; for it was so very cold and penetrating that no other vessel would hold it. However, most are of the opinion that all this is a mere made-up story, no slight evidence of which is, that during the dissensions among the commanders, which lasted several days, the body continued clear and fresh, without any sign of such taint or corruption, though it lay neglected in a close, sultry place.

Landscapes of emotion: Aeneas and the Tiber

For my year 12 class, studying hard over this weekend for an assessment task, here are some excerpts from an article (by Richard Jenkyns) I found in a back issue of Omnibus:

It is Virgil's habit to look at familiar things as though they were strange... [and in the Aeneid] he takes the landscape of Italy and... makes us see the familiar as strange. It is also his practice in the Aeneid to look at people and things from various different viewpoints... The Sibyl calls Turnus a second Achilles, but in the end he will play the role of Hector. To Juno and Amata Aeneas seems like a Paris (or so they unjustly claim), but at different times we see him in lights that suggest Hector, Achilles, Jason, Augustus and so on. Virgil walsk round his characters, so to speak, examining them from different angles, casting different lights upon them...

Let us then... apply [these two practices of Virgil's] to the voyage up the Tiber. He allows the reader to the scene from four or five separate points of view, and in each of them the familiar is made strange in at least one way.

First there is the Trojans' viewpoint. They are witnessing a miracle, and they are penetrating into the unknown: the 'cutting through the green woods' is splendidly jungly, and the fine phrase longos superant flexus, which has them 'conquering' each new bend, conveys the sense that they are discovering and exploring things utterly unkown before. Then there is the viewpoint of ourselves, Virgil's Italian readers (I say that because we must imagine ourselves to be Italians of the Augustan age if we are to get into the spirit of the poem): we see the familiar stretch of river between Ostia and Rome made strange in two ways. We see what in our own day is the most densely populated area in the world turned into jungle; and we see the turbulent silty Tiber turned by miracle into a glassy calm (Tiber was notoriously yellow from the mud it carried; we see it in this form, yellow and eddying, near the start of the seventh book)...

One last point of view remains, that of the landscape itself. The passage is flooded with words for wonder: 'mirantur... miratur' But by a stroke of genius Virgil attributes this not to the Trojans - we can take it for granted that they marvel - but to the woods and waters... Virgil makes us suppose that the wonderment of nature here is not just a loose way of talking but a reality, part of the wonder itself: one aspect of the miracle is that the landscape comes alive and feels.

Classicum

Last week a copy of Classicum- the journal of the Classical Languages Teachers’ Association- arrived in the post. There were a couple of interesting articles, including one by Dexter Hoyos (who taught me Latin at Sydney Uni), on why we translate from Latin to English. It seems an odd question, but his point is that focussing on translating Latin makes us overlook the skills we need to read and understand Latin. Here are a few excerpts:

Why do we translate Latin into English in our Latin courses? The answer might seem incontestable: to enable students to practise their grasp of Latin grammar, and teachers to have a ready check on their progress. Another question is perhaps more pertinent: why does translating from Latin (and, in some courses, into Latin) persist right through secondary school study and then university study too? And most pertinent of all, why do we in effect kiss goodbye – from the very beginning – to all hope that our students will understand what Romans wrote without making it into English?…

[Translating] does have its uses. We cannot teach elementary Latin without it to clarify points of grammar and meaning. Even at advanced levels it can be useful for explaining some points to students. Translating well is also intellectually satisfying in itself. Even so, as an element of Latin study it is like using a teaspoon to eat a meal: at best , useful but not ideal; at worst, a misdirection of effort…

There are two critical drawbacks to this [approach]. The first is obvious: if to understand one has to translate, how much of one’s life is needed for ‘reading’ the twelve books of the Aeneid or twenty-nine of Cicero’s extant speeches (not to mention all fifty-eight)? ... The second drawback is still more damaging. Translating-to-understand encourages learners to assume… that the proper medium for understanding and absorbing Roman literature is English… This is killing to any in-depth comprehension of a text…

The full article was originally published in CPL online and can be down loaded here. Professor Hoyos is also the author of the book Latin, how to read it fluently : a practical manual (read more about this book here- you'll need to scroll down the page a bit to find the relevant info).

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)

Asterix and the Archeologists

There was an interesting article in Monday's newspaper about some archaeological digs going in central France. The archaeologists have found all kinds of things which suggest that the Gauls had a much more sophisticated society than is popularly imagined. I'm not sure that it's as revolutionary a discovery as the article makes out, but it's an interesting read nevertheless. Here's an extract:

Rather than the random gatherings of rudimentary thatched huts illustrated in the Asterix books, first published in 1961, archaeologists now believe the Gauls lived in elegant buildings with tiled roofs, laid out in towns with public squares.

Ironmongers' tools, coins and scales suggest they also crafted metalwork just as complex as anything produced by the Romans, even before the Roman invasion in 52BC. The findings have been made at a dig in Corent, near Lyon, where archaeologists have uncovered what they believe is the palace of Vercingetorix, a prince and the last military leader of all Gaul.

Vercingetorix was a leader of the Gauls, who fought a long war against Julius Caesar. Plutarch records a dramatic account of his surrender to Caesar:

But those who held Alesia, after giving no small trouble to themselves and to Caesar, at last surrendered; and the leader of the whole war, Vergentorix, putting on his best armour, and equipping his horse, came out through the gates, and riding round Caesar who was seated, and then leaping down from his horse, he threw off his complete armour, and seating himself at Cæsar's feet, he remained there till he was delivered up to be kept for the triumph.

[Plutarch, Life of Caesar, XXVII]

Caesar himself gives us quite a different account in his own history of the Gallic wars:

Vercingetorix, having convened a council the following day, declared that he had undertaken that war, not on account of his own exigencies, but on account of the general freedom; and since he must yield to fortune, he offered himself to them for either purpose, whether they should wish to atone to the Romans by his death, or surrender him alive. Ambassadors are sent to Caesar on this subject. He orders their arms to be surrendered, and their chieftains delivered up. He seated himself at the head of the lines in front of the camp, the Gallic chieftains are brought before him. They surrender Vercingetorix, and lay down their arms.

[Caesar, de bello Gallico VII.89]

Milky Richness

There’s a famous passage in Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria where he describes the ‘milky richness’ (lactea ubertas) of Livy’s Histories. It’s a very evocative phrase, which I’ve often thought related to the smoothness of Livy’s prose style, “rich, smooth, free from turbulence” or “flowing… avoiding the abruptness of Thucydides’s Greek and Sallust’s Latin” as it has been variously described.

[by H. J. Rose in A Handbook of Latin Literature (p300), and J. Wight Duff in A Literary History of Rome from the Origins to the Close of the Golden Age (p480) respectively]

However I recently read an article which suggested another possible interpretation of the phrase. The author points out that “Livy is remarkable for the extreme range of styles which he uses in his narrative to achieve variety”, and that it’s therefore a bit of a stretch to characterise his style as smooth and flowing.

A better way of understanding Quintilian’s phrase (so the author argues) is that Livy’s writing is ‘nutritional’ and ‘appropriate for infants’; that is, it is good for students of rhetoric as it provides them with good models to imitate; it helps them to ‘grow up’ as speakers, just as milk helps babies to grow up and mature. The metaphor of milk in the context of education is found elsewhere in Quintilian, in several first century Greek writers, and even in the bible. It also fits with Quintilian’s own methods of education. As he writes in his Insititutio Oratoria (2.5.19)

“For my part I would have them read the best authors from the very beginning and never leave them, choosing those, however, who are simplest and most intelligible. For instance when prescribing [texts] for boys, I should give Livy the preference over Sallust; for although the latter is the greater historian, one requires to be well advanced in one’s studies to appreciate him properly.”

It is good for young boys to read Livy not because he is the best historian, but because his writing will help them to mature in their studies.(Quintilian is silent on what girls should read.)

The article finishes up with this helpful summary:

“I conclude, then, that illa lactea ubertas Livi is an assertion that students at the elementary levels of the oratorical curriculum can obtain from reading Livy the sort of supplementary information and stylistic skills which keep their speeches from being bare bones. They will encounter unusual words, rhythmic prose structures, notable tropes, other ornamental features, and a general fullness of style which are the components of ubertas. And they will encounter them in an author who will prove enjoyable and engaging, and thus suitable to their youth.”

[Lactea Ubertas: What's Milky about Livy? Steve Hays The Classical Journal, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Dec., 1986 - Jan., 1987), pp. 107-116]

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.]