urna movet

urna, ae f. a vessel of baked clay, vessel for drawing water, water-pot, water jar, urn: a voting-urn, ballot-box: An urn for lots, vessel for drawing lots.


The recent Latin Extension HSC paper had what I thought was a pretty difficult unseen in it. There was some pretty difficult language and a typo (don't tell the SMH) didn't make things much easier. But I thought the most difficult thing  was to understand what on earth Horace is talking about, with very little context. The end of the extract in particular contained the phrase movet urna, which has a particular, pretty specific meaning. Here's the extract the kids had to translate:

holidays

Holidays are here again and, just like the birds in Aeneid VI, I'm escaping the frigidus annus, and off to the terris... apricis of Queensland for a week.

By the river Styx...

[By Jessica and Rose]

[By Alex]

I came across these pictures drawn for me by some of my former students today, and I thought I'd post them to add a bit of excitement to my blog. They both show scenes from Aeneas' journey through the underworld. Here's how Virgil describes it:

Hinc via Tartarei quae fert Acherontis ad undas.
turbidus hic caeno vastaque voragine gurges
aestuat atque omnem Cocyto eructat harenam.
portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina servat
terribili squalore Charon, cui plurima mento
canities inculta iacet, stant lumina flamma,
sordidus ex umeris nodo dependet amictus.
ipse ratem conto subigit velisque ministrat
et ferruginea subvectat corpora cumba,
iam senior, sed cruda deo viridisque senectus.
huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,

matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita
magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae,
impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum:
quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis.

From here there is a path, which leads to the rolling waters of Tartarean Acheron. Here, in a vast chasm, thick with mud, a whirlpool seethes and belches forth all its sand into Cocytus. The dreadful ferryman Charon, in terrible filth, guards these waters and rivers. On his chin grows a mass of unkempt grey hair, his eyes blaze with flame, his dirty cloak hangs down from a knot at his shoulders. He guides the raft with a pole and tends to the sails, and he carries the bodies upstream in his rust-coloured boat. He is now quite old, but for a god old age is fresh and green. To here the whole crowd rushed, streaming to the banks. Mothers and men, and the bodies of great hearted heroes, now finished with their lives. Boys and unwedded girls, and young men, placed on pyres before the eyes of their parents, as many as the leaves in a forest, which at autumn's first frost drop and fall, or as many as the birds which flock to land from the seething deep, when the cold season drives them across the sea and sends them to sunny lands.

[Aeneid VI.295-312]

locos laetos sedesque beatas

My year 12 class have been studying the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid for their HSC this year. It’s a mysterious and evocative part of Virgil’s poem, in which the hero, Aeneas, descends to the underworld to visit his father. The other day we read Virgil’s description of the Elysium, the place of the blessed. This is how he describes it:

His demum exactis, perfecto munere divae,
devenere locos laetos et amoena virecta
fortunatorum nemorum sedesque beatas.
largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris,
contendunt ludo et fulva luctantur harena;
pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt.

arma procul currusque virum miratur inanis;
stant terra defixae hastae passimque soluti
per campum pascuntur equi.

conspicit, ecce, alios dextra laevaque per herbam
vescentis laetumque choro paeana canentis
inter odoratum lauris nemus, unde superne
plurimus Eridani per silvam volvitur amnis.

When this rite was at last performed and his duty to the goddess was done, they entered the land of joy, the lovely glades of the fortunate woods and the home of the blest. Here a broader sky clothes the plains in glowing light, and the spirits have their own sun and their own stars. Some exercise their limbs on grassy wrestling grounds- they compete in sport and wrestle on the golden sand. Others pound the earth with their feet in dance, and sing songs.

Aeneas admires from a distance their armour and empty chariots. their spears stand, fixed in the ground, and their horses wander free on the plain, cropping the grass.

Then suddenly he sees others on the left and on the right, feasting on the grass, singing in chorus a joyful hymn to Apollo, all through a grove of fragrant laurels, where the mighty river Eridanus winds its way through the woods to the world above.

(Aeneid 6.637-44, 51-3, 56-9)

Here's an interesting article which compares Virgil's description of the underworld to that of Homer in book XI of the Odyssey, and also contains a glossary of names and places mentioned in book VI of the Aeneid.