Archive for 2007
Reviving Latin–Not Just For English-Speakers
From the Bryn Mawr Classical Review: Wilfried Stroh, Latein ist tot, lang lebe Latein. Kleine Geschichte einer grossen Sprache. Berlin: List, 2007. Pp. 415. To release one’s book with a major non-academic publishing house and reach the best seller list (?) may sound like a classicist’s wildest dream, but ‘Latein ist tot, es lebe Latein’ […]
Carpe Diem!
Harry Mount, whose op-ed on learning Latin was featured in the New York Times here and was itself translated into Latin here, returns to virtual pages of the news. From Slate: Last year, a surprise best seller hit the British book market: a romp through Latin grammar, by a London journalist called Harry Mount. In […]
Erin Brockovich Meets The Asopus River–Site of the Battle of Plataea
(from rogueclassicism) From the Sydney Morning Herald: Factory Waste Turns River Into Purple Pain The river started turning purple 10 years ago, but the people in the small Greek town of Oinofyta who were losing loved ones to cancer never thought of blaming the water. Factories have been dumping waste in the Asopos River for […]
Gustie Student Wins 1st Place with Cicero On Her Side
Mary McHugh reports: After Proctor’s visit and his talks on Cicero and Petrarch, which our CII students attended, one of the students, Claire Sagstuen came into class and told me that all that time spent on Cicero paid off. Claire is on the Gustavus Forensics team, and she won first place in impromptu speaking for a speech centered […]
When in Rome…Take a Bath
To see where Romans fall in the history of personal hygiene, read Salon’s interview with Katherine Ashenburg, author of “The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History” here. What did clean mean in ancient Rome? If you were a man, you would take off all your clothes, put a little oil on your body, rub it with dust […]
First Came Pitt, Then Came DiCaprio…
According to Variety, producer Scott Rudin has just paid $2 million for the rights to Robert Graves’ novel I, Claudius. Several studios fought for Graves’ famed book about the Roman Empire as told through the eyes of Claudius — a member of the imperial family who hid his brilliance behind a stutter and a limp […]
You Sank My Trireme!
hat-tip: Colleen and Nick
Latin–Back From the Dead and More Necessary Than Ever!
And hot on the heels of Robert Proctor’s lecture (see previous)…If you ever needed a reason to study Latin, go take a look at the New York Times op-ed piece A Vote for Latin. High school, Jefferson thought, should center on Latin, Greek and French, with grammar and reading exercises, translations into English and the […]
Gustavus and the Liberales Artes
Students and faculty from across the Gustavus campus braved the elements on a cold Monday evening to hear Robert Proctor deliver his lecture “Violence to Beauty: Roman Origins of the Liberal Arts”. Professor Proctor’s previous book “Education’s Great Amnesia” won the 1990 AAC’s Ness Award as the book that contributed most to liberal learning. His insights into the […]
Hannibal, part deux
Apparently Hannibal, the 3rd century BC Carthaginian general, who caused so much trouble for the Romans during the Second Carthaginian War, is finally getting his cinematic piece of the classics-movie pie. Based on the novel Hannibal by Ross Leckie, the movie is scheduled for release sometime in 2008. After rumors of a Denzel Washington-ian Hannibal, […]