NUNTII: Interesting Mosaic Project in the News

Latin teacher Rebecca Chode's Latin 3's and 4's are engaged in a very interesting project: recreating some of the marine mosaic scenes from the House of the Faun (Pompeii). They used an indirect method and hopefully some day we'll get to see photos (someone send them along if they're already available!). Full story in the Hingham Journal ...

::Tuesday, August 26, 2003 8:16:20 PM::
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TTT: Article on Augustus

Lin Ouyang, "The Achievements of the Divine Augustus"

A nice overview of what Augustus achieved and how. Teachers will definitely want to read this one -- it's term paper length, has references, and is rather good!

::Tuesday, August 26, 2003 8:10:26 PM::
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NUNTII: Sporting the Sicilian Nonno Look!!

Tearing up the newswaves today is shocking news ... evidence from Britain suggests Romans may have -- gasp -- worn socks in their sandals! At that dig in south London wherein they found that tin of "face cream" a few weeks ago, archaeologists have excavated the foot of a bronze statue which appears to be sporting both sandals and socks. No word yet on whether they found the Bermuda shorts and T-shirt to complete the ensemble. Plenty of coverage of this one pouring in and the headline writers are having a field day (as did I ... by the way, I'm married to a Sicilian):

Roman Crimes of Fashion Revealed (BBC)
Socks-Appeal of Ancient Rome (News.com)
Roman Sock Shock (Sydney Morning Herald)
Roman Foot Reveals Fashion Blunder (CNN)
No Socks Please -- We're British (Megastar)

::Tuesday, August 26, 2003 5:18:16 PM::
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NUNTII: Movie Gossip

Forgot to mention this one yesterday. Debuting at the forthcoming Toronto Film Festival will be The Human Stain, all about a disgraced Classics professor who has an affair with a younger woman. As such, our next 'Classicist image' (replacing Kevin Kline, of course) will be Anthony Hopkins and the love interest is Nicole Kidman. Source ...

::Tuesday, August 26, 2003 6:39:30 AM::
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OPED: Why Study Latin

For most of the people who are reading this blog, there is probably no problem coming up with a list of reasons to study Latin. The National Committee for Latin and Greek has downloadable brochures available on that very topic, and other such lists are omnipresent on the web, e.g.,  at William Harris' site, the Somerset Hills School District site, and the University of Notre Dame, to name but three. One of the big reasons (and justifications) for Latin in schools has always been 'to improve your English vocabulary'. Today, however, I came upon an OP-Ed piece which takes this further.  According to Mary Colalillo, a student majoring in Mathematics and Classics at Purdue, there is a link between Latin and liberty. Writing for a libertarian (I think? I'm Canadian, so I'm not quite sure) website, she makes the connection between the abuse and misuse of language by tyrants and how Latin trains the mind to know what words really mean or don't mean. Read the whole article at LewRockwell.com ...

That Classically-trained people do pick up on the subtleties of the English language should be no surprise to long-time members of the Classics list or regular readers of Dr. Weevil ... now if we can just convince my school board on the benefits of Latin ...

::Tuesday, August 26, 2003 6:28:50 AM::
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NUNTII: Seeds Sown in Latin Class

Regular readers of Explorator and/or the Classics list will be aware of the discovery in the past few weeks of traces of Caligula's palace in Rome. While I think the jury is still out on some of the claims associated with the palace as presented in the press (more on that later tonight), today I learned the dig was conducted by a group called the American Institute for Roman Culture, which I have never heard of before. The Huntington Herald-Dispatch, however, does have a nice piece on the founder of the institute -- former Huntington High School student Darius Arya -- and the Latin teacher who clearly inspired him -- Lois Merritt. As the editor of the Ancient World on Television, I also note that Darius was influenced by watching movies about Rome on television after school (n.b. for those wondering ... the AWOTV listings will be resuming this weekend)..

::Tuesday, August 26, 2003 6:05:46 AM::
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