THIS DAY IN ANCIENT HISTORY

pridie nonas januarias

• ludi compitales (day 2)

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 6:59:34 PM::
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NUNTII: Latin News from Radio Bremen

Here's the headlines for December from Radio Bremen's version of Nuntii Latini. The stories are all on the same page with a handy glossary at the bottom:

Saddam Hussein captus
 
Immutatio vectigalium constituta
   
Frustra conventus de constitutione Europaea habitus
       
Iubilaeum aeronauticum
       
E cineribus Phoenix
       
Denuo miraculum apud Visurgim fluvium factum

Will Quadflieg mortuus
  
Mammale minime parvum detectum

MEMORABILIA: De Canossa
       
NOTABILIA : Via Appia -iarum regina
 

Audi ...

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 11:39:23 AM::
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NUNTII: Nuntii Latini

Latest News from Radio Finland's Nuntii Latini (click on headline for the text):

Urbs Iraniae motu terrae vastata

Comitia Serbiae parlamentaria

Pericula ex climate calidiore imminentia

Nulla pax in terris

QUID LIBYES NUNTIAVERINT

VETUS ECCLESIA ARELATENSIS

Audi ...

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 11:34:51 AM::
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REVIEWS: From BMCR

Vayos Liapis, Agnostos Theos. Horia tes anthropines gnoses stous Prosokratikous kai ston Oidipoda Turanno. (review in English)

David Konstan, Keith Rutter (edd.), Envy, Spite and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece.

Catherine Collobert (ed.), L'Avenir de la Philosophie est-il Grec?. (review in English)

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 11:30:41 AM::
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CHATTER: Caligula's Horse Watch

The latest quote (from the Guardian) to reference Caligula's horse:

The Buckingham Palace corgi makes Caligula's horse look under-promoted.

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 11:24:54 AM::
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NUNTII: Latinitas resurgens

The Delaware News-Journal is the latest to have a lengthy article on the resurgence of Latin:

If you thought Latin was so last millennium: Ut si! (As if!)

Pop culture and a link to standardized test score improvements have resurrected the tongue of Roman emperors and philosophers in Delaware high schools and across the country. Thanks to fictional wizard Harry Potter, a handful of toga-wearing movie stars and adolescents' love of retro, all things classical are also cool.

Latin classes became passé in the late 1960s and vanished from most public school schedules by the 1980s, foreign language educators said. Schools were eliminating subjects no longer deemed relevant to modern life, and Latin was lumped into the group. As Latin teachers retired, they weren't replaced, and Spanish and French programs grew.

Now, with the growing nationwide emphasis on improving standardized test scores, Latin is making a comeback.

Several studies, some dating to the late 1970s, have shown students who take Latin tend to have higher verbal scores, according to the National Council of State Supervisors of Foreign Languages.

In 2003, students who took Latin to fulfill their foreign language requirements had a mean score of 559 on the verbal component of the SATs. French students scored 524 and Spanish students 501.The mean national verbal SAT score was 507.

Junior Chelsea Crum at the Charter School of Wilmington said she's performing better in chemistry since she started studying Latin. She remembers the abbreviations for elements on the periodic table better because most have Latin stems.

"They learn the skill of breaking down words to their basic components," her teacher Barry Messinger said. He said about 50 percent to 60 percent of the English language derives from Latin. He has noticed his students become aware of the historical and etymological contexts of language. That helps further develop critical thinking skills.

The results can be dramatic, some educators said.

"Students occasionally come in and say they've raised their verbal scores. I have one this year who went up 100 points after two years of Latin - she was thrilled," said Allison Richards, a Latin teacher at Caesar Rodney High School in Camden and president of the Delaware Classical Association. "There's also an advantage in higher-order thinking skills that any foreign language will develop. But Latin helps in particular because Latin is a very logical language."

The correlation between Latin study and high test scores doesn't necessarily indicate a cause-and-effect relationship, said Kristin Carnahan, a spokeswoman for the College Board, which administers the test and keeps statistics on scores.

"We're simply observing higher scores. Can we say it's because they took Latin? We can't say that," Carnahan said. "They're probably already taking a rigorous schedule."

Still, it seems students are taking a shot at testing the link as more enroll or request the subject. Lately, private schools that long have offered Latin are seeing a resurgence in class enrollment. And public schools are hearing requests for its revival.

Latin classes started six years ago at the Charter School of Wilmington. Since then, they've expanded from an introductory level to four levels, including advanced placement.

Arnaldo Finamore, head of the foreign language department at McKean High School, said his school and Dickinson High School are searching for Latin teachers. A.I. du Pont High School has offered Latin off and on, contingent upon student interest. In the past two years, interest has increased.

Richards of Caesar Rodney also said she sees signs of a resurgence of interest. She said at least a dozen students chose to attend Caesar Rodney under the school choice program so they could take Latin. She wishes there were other Latin teachers the district could hire, but they are rare.

Messinger and Richards said many students who aspire to be doctors or lawyers turn to Latin because they know the language is used extensively in the terminology of medicine and law.

Aside from its scholastic appeal, Latin seems exotic and fun to many students, teachers said.

Students like the cultural aspects of the class. Messinger's students have formed a club so they can meet after school and play Roman war-strategy board games. And there's always the chance to wear a toga - a favorite with youth.

And since the teenage years are all about the quest for identity, individualists take Latin simply because of what it isn't - Spanish or French.

"I wanted to be different," said Caitlyn Johnstone, a freshman at Charter School of Wilmington.

Latin to her and her classmates is cool. Pop culture, of late, is telling them they're right. Storybook hero Harry Potter pronounces most of his spells in Latin. Hollywood hunks Russell Crowe, Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell are charming teens with classical-era drama in the Oscar-winning "Gladiator" and upcoming films "Troy" and "Alexander The Great."

Charter School of Wilmington senior Jack Song said after he started studying Latin, his SAT verbal scores went from 600 to 720 on his second try. He said the roots of words in vocabulary portions of the test suddenly popped out at him. "I could make more educated guesses," he said.

Most of Richards' pre-med hopefuls find out how hard Latin is after they enroll - but they stay because they become intrigued with the cultural subtexts.

"What I basically teach is a literature course," she said. Students learn the language as they read classical texts of comedy, tragedy and romance. They learn the basic themes of Western culture's literature and art.

Shuhan Wang, education associate for world languages and international education at the state Department of Education, wonders whether the connection between Latin and test scores might be overstated.

She's pleased the "Harry Potter syndrome," as she called the Latin resurgence, has made parents and educators aware that studying languages helps students perform better in other subjects.

But she feels the elements of cultural exploration and current events can be added by studying living languages rarely taught, such as Arabic or Chinese.

"Our notion of literacy is very, very narrow - just reading and writing in one language," she said. "People who have studied another language are more open-minded. They see there's different ways of seeing the world."

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 11:20:30 AM::
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CHATTER: Sulfites and Wine

About.com's Wine Guide has a feature under the above title which mentions:

Winemakers have been adding additional sulfites to wines for millenia. The Greeks and Romans used sulfur candles to sterilize their wine barrels and amphorae. Sulfur protects damage to the wine by oxygen, and again helps prevent organisms from growing in the wine. This allows the wine to "last longer" too, which lets it age and develop all of those complex flavors we all love and enjoy so much.

A winery site gives a somewhat different spin:

The use of sulfites to preserve wine dates back more than 2000 years, to when the Greeks and Romans burned sulfur candles in their cups, barrels and jugs. The sulfur dioxide left on the container would dissolve in the wine, becoming the preservative we call sulfites.

Interesting ... I can't find a reference to this (it must be in Pliny the Elder somewhere); I can't help but wonder, though, whether sulfites which may have been found as residue in wine vessels didn't come from sulfur being put on the grapes themselves as an insecticide ... it's still done by assorted grape growers I know (like my father-in-law).

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 11:15:59 AM::
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NUNTII: New Explorator

Explorator 6.36 has just hit the ewaves and the web ... Enjoy!

::Sunday, January 04, 2004 9:49:23 AM::
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