Mt Vesuvius

Here are a couple of interesting animations related to the eruption of Mt Vesuvius:

• eruption of Vesuvius
• eruption of Vesuvius II
• What did the eruption look like
• nine minute eruption video
• growth of a stratovolcano

The cambridge website also has a whole bunch of links for you to explore.

Aeneid II- Yr 11 lesson

The Aeneid- Overview

• The Aeneid is an epic poem of 12 books or chapters. What other Greek or Roman epics can you discover?


• The 12 books of the Aeneid are often grouped into two lots of six. Find out what unites the first, and the last six books.


• The even-numbered books of the Aeneid also have something in common – what?

Aeneid II

• Where is Aeneas at the start of Aeneid II?


• How did he get there?

The following characters all play important roles in Aeneid II – find out a bit of information about each one:

• Cassandra
• Creusa
• Hector
• Hecuba
• Iulus/Ascanius
• Laocoon
• Pallas Minerva
• Priam
• Sinon

If you've finished all that, you can go to Aeneas' Facebook

Year 8 Latin, Periods 2+3

salvete discipulae!

This morning you can have some time to work on and research your presentations. If you can't remember what you signed up for, you can check by opening the Yr 8 Presentations file in your year 8 Latin folder.


You may find some information regarding your various topics in your textbooks, and if you look under the relevant chapters on the Cambridge Latin Course website, you'll find heaps of links to other websites some of which have some really good information. The following general websites may also be of assistance to you:

• The Romans (really good for general culture and history)
• Theoi (really good for gods and mythology)
• About.com (good for history)
• Athens + Sparta (good for mythology)

I'm sure you'll be able to find many other useful sites on your own. If you do, why not leave a comment...

Year 7 Latin

For this afternoon's lesson you have two options:

1. You can spend some time revising for your upcoming test by visiting the Cambridge Latin Course website and giving yourself a vocab quiz or doing some of the Practising the Language exercises.
2. If you would prefer to work on your assignment, you may find the following sites helpful:

• Harry Potter Encyclopedia
• Spells in Harry Potter (wikipedia)
• Latin Family Trees
• Roman Gods' Family Tree

Have fun!

Year 8, period 3

Once you have finished the worksheet, you can spend some time revising what we have learnt in stage 11. Go to the Cambridge Latin Course website and complete all the Practising the Language exercises you find there (Test your Vocab, Word Endings, Sorting Words).

If you've finished that, you can read a bit about Roman politics and law at one of these sites.

Inscriptions

To prepare for our excursion to the Nicholson Museum tomorrow, my year 9 and 10 classes have been looking at some Latin inscriptions found on tombstones. Reading Latin inscriptions is quite different to reading 'normal' Latin, as so many of the words are abbreviated in order to save space (and time and effort I suppose).

The photo above (which I took last time I was in Rome) is a bad example of this- all the words are written out in full. I suppose the people who paid for it had a lot of money and didn't mind the expense.

If you're looking for more funeral inscriptions there are a few links in this previous post, or you can have a look at this site which has a lot of not-very-good-quality photos of tombstones from around England (click on 'prev page' to cycle through all 29 tombstones).

Related Posts

• Nicholson Museum

Yr 12 lesson; Rhetoric now and then

The NSW HSC syllabus includes a list of stylistic features and literary terms with which you should be familiar, to help you describe and analyse the style of the Latin authors we read together. We've already seen many of these features in context, particularly in the speeches of Cicero, who was without doubt one of the greatest Roman orators.

To help us become a bit more familiar with some of these rhetorical techniques, go to the syllabus and read over the list you'll find there (on pages 32-7). If any of the explanations are a bit unclear, have a look at this site, which gives a definition of a variety of rhetorical terms, along with examples.

Then go and read Barack Obama's victory speech and see how many of these rhetorical techniques you can identify in it.

In a word document, make a list of all the techniques you can find, including examples, and email it to me at the end of the lesson.

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.

Gladiatores

My year 8 class have been looking at gladiators recently, so I've put together a few sites for them to look at this afternoon.

• You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator is a fun site that follows the fate of a Gaul captured by Roman soldiers, sold as a slave and trained as a gladiator.

• Roman Gladiatorial Games is not as fun, but has lots of good information

• This BBC site is also pretty good, and has a cool game to play (dress your gladiator correctly to help him win in the arena).

• Finally have a look at the Cambridge Site to do some vocab revision and grammar games.

Year 8 vocab quiz

Every Thursday my year 8 class has a vocab test, but sadly we can't have it today as I'm on strike. So instead (since this is a teachers' strike not a students' strike) they can quiz themselves.

step 1. go to the cambridge vocab tester, select 10 questions, vocab from stage 6 (not checklist only), English to Latin

step 2. do the quiz, write down your mark out of 10

step 3. write down the Latin for: I was walking; you praised; she was carrying; we shouted; they were

step 4. check your answers by reading the comments to this post

step 5. post a comment with your name and mark out of 20

Roman Wordplay

I've just finished reading Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson's very entertaining book about the English language. One chapter is all about wordplay, where he has this to say:

Wordplay is about as old as language itself, and about as various. As Tony Augarde notes... many verbal pastimes go back to the futhest reaches of antiquity. Palindromes, sentences that read the same backwards as forwards, are at least 2,000 years old. The ancient Greeks often put 'nipson anomimata mi monan opsin' on fountains. It translates as 'Wash the sin as well as the face'.' The Romans admired them too, as demonstrated by 'in girum imus noctem et consumimur igni' ('We enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire'), which was said to describe the actions of moths. The Romans also liked anagrams- scrambling the letters of a word or phrase to form new words or phrases- and turned 'quid est veritas?' ('What is truth?') into 'est vir qui adest' ('It is this man here?').

(Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue, p 224)

This site has some more Latin word games, including my favourite, the Sator square.

Classical Plurales

Part of my quest to reinstate Latin as the lingua franca of the modern world involves bringing Latin plurals back into common usage. Here are five simple rules to ensure that you are never embarassed in polite company.

1. Words ending in -a change to –ae

one formula, two formulae
one antenna, two antennae
one banana, two bananae

2. Words ending in –us change to –i (see exceptions below)

one focus, two foci
one locus, two loci
one walrus, two walri

3. Words ending in –um change to –a

one datum, two data
one referendum, two referenda
one alpacum, two alpaca

4. Words ending in –x change to –ces

one appendix, two appendices
one index, two indices
one box, two boces

5. Words ending in –is change to –es

one crisis, two crises
one thesis, two theses
one iris, two ires

Exceptions

People often try to apply rule #2 to the words platypus, octopus and hippopotamus. These words are obviously of Greek origin, and so applying Latin plurales to them is problematic. The correct form for the first two is of course platypodes and octopodes (pus/pod- means 'foot' and is the same word that you find in podiatrist). Hippopotamus is a bit trickier. As you should know hippo is Greek for ‘horse’ and potamus means ‘of the river’. Therefore the correct plural should be hippoipotamus ('horses of the river') or if you like hippoipotamon ('horses of the rivers').

Neuter nouns such as opus and genus and gerbus, though being Latin in origin, also do not conform to rule #2. Their plurals should be opera, genera and gerbera respectively.

Roman Inscriptions

For my Year 10 class

After you have read through the information on inscriptions in your text book (you can find similar information here), and have deciphered the inscriptions given there, have a go at doing these slightly trickier ones.

Four soldiers


Eumachia Inscription (a list of common abbreviations might help you here)

The Arch at Beneventum

Funerary inscriptions (scroll down the page and click on the individual tombs)

Other kinds of inscriptions

Monday, period 4

Good Morning year 9! Your task today, should you choose to accept it, is to visit the Cambridge course website, and do some of the grammar and vocabulary exercises from the last couple of stages. If you've finished with those, you can visit this site, and have a go at some on-line trivia quizes, or this site to play hangman in Latin.