I was semi-surprised no one on the Classics list mentioned this last week when all the news was abuzz with news about John Roberts and the Supreme Court ... an excerpt from the Indy Star:

The people who remembered Roberts congregated at the two Catholic schools he attended. Roberts attended Notre Dame Grade School less than a mile from his home and graduated from La Lumiere, a boarding and day high school near LaPorte, in 1973.

Lawrence Sullivan, a former teacher and headmaster who worked at the school for 35 years, said he remembered the young man well. Roberts was a captain of the football team, a wrestler and a member of the track team. He was interested in every subject, Sullivan said, but excelled especially in Latin, passing the advanced placement test on the epic poetry of Virgil.


The Lexington Herald-Leader adds this little detail, inter alia:

After completing the school's two-year Latin curriculum, Roberts worked on his own translating Virgil's "Aeneid."

"The guy who taught Latin had a hard time keeping up with him," said Larry Sullivan, the school's former headmaster.


... so he's probably the kind of judge who will pronounce stare decisis correctly ...