Monthly Archives: October 2005

Ludus Elegiacus

In 1937, a Latin teacher named L. E. Eyres published his “Ludus Elegiacus” in Greece & Rome (pages 56-57 and 155). It is a set of twenty-five epigrams in elegiac couplets, the first five of four lines each, the rest … Continue reading

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Tell Me Something I Don’t Already Know

My blog is worth $0.00.How much is your blog worth?

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What I’ve Been Reading

Anthony Grafton’s The Footnote: A Curious History (1997). Here’s my favorite passage so far (62-63): Around the turn of the century, many American universities began to make themselves over, following what they saw as the German model. Professors, many of … Continue reading

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Semi-New Feature

I have added a category in the left column for ‘Lists of Commentaries’. So far, the only one is for Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, though Ovid’s Heroides will follow. This is not a complete bibliography, but a cross-reference of letters against … Continue reading

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Never Send A Machine To Do A Man’s Job

James Lileks finds some coded Latin on a website, but concludes that it must be gibberish, since the online Latin translator couldn’t handle it. That just shows how stupid machines are. It’s not quite classical Latin, but close enough to … Continue reading

Posted in Culture: Poetry, Orbilius | 1 Comment

What Did Seneca Know About Babies?

Not much, to judge by E. M. 22.15, where Natura addresses those dying old: ‘Sine cupiditatibus uos genui, sine timoribus, sine superstitione, sine perfidia ceterisque pestibus; quales intrastis exite.’ “I engendered you without desires, without fears, without superstition, without treachery … Continue reading

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Latin In Odd Places

I just found out that someone calling himself both ‘logoparenthêtês’ (accents in the original) and ‘quislibet’ has translated Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” into Latin. Even those of us generally unfamiliar with Sir Mix-a-Lot’s oeuvre remember the line “I like … Continue reading

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This Day In History Hagiography

Today is not only the 2,074th birthday of Publius Vergilius Maro and the feast of St. Teresa of Ávila, it is also the feast of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831-1906), Episcopalian bishop of Shanghai, a dedicated missionary who translated the … Continue reading

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Great Minds Think Alike

Helmuth, Graf von Moltke (the Elder): No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Seneca (the Younger): Vetus proverbium est gladiatorem in harena capere consilium; aliquid adversarii vultus, aliquid manus mota, aliquid ipsa inclinatio corporis intuentem monet. Quid fieri soleat, … Continue reading

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Johnson On Housman

From Charles Johnston, Selected Poems (London, 1985): Footnote to Housman To reach the top flight as a poet you must write an unreadable work, so obscure that your friends will forgo it and all but the bravest will shirk. Then … Continue reading

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Seen In The Periodical Room

In some classical journal — it may have been Mnemosyne — I recently ran across a review of a title guaranteed to confuse just about every non-classicist and some percentage of classicists, too: The Fragments of the Methodists, Volume I. … Continue reading

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