the CAMPVS

Laryngeal get ya every time!

This, from Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo’s review of Michiel Arnoud Cor de Vaan’s Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, is the best and most insightful comment I’ve read in the BMCR in quite some time:

Pater is said to go back to a nursery form *pa, phonologically *pH2. Much as I like the laryngeal theory in its modern form, a phonological representation of babies’ first babbling seems slightly over the top. Exactly the same could be said about atta “daddy” < *H2et-o-.

I told that to my wife and her friend this afternoon as though it were a knock-knock joke, but they didn’t find it as funny as I did.

Aleae Verbales

I picked up an idea mentioned by one participant at the recent Latin workshop at Dickinson college, namely the use of dice to drill forms.

With this page, titled ALEAE IACTAE ESTOTE!, students cut out one die for person and number (1st Sg. through 3rd Pl.) and one die for each tense (Pres., Imp., Fut, Pf. Plupf., & Fut. Pf.).

My students have been finding it alternately fun and challenging to produce these forms, but the real value is that students who have struggled with learning verb endings and the principal parts of verbs are now finding that it all makes sense.

As a corollary I’ve also given them an adapted list of the top 50 verbs according to Oerberg’s support materials, as well this nice, color-coded sheet on using principal parts.

I hope others have as much success with them as I have.

Now that’s what I call a podcast

Christopher Francese, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Dickinson yesterday (“Active Latin in the Classroom: Strategies for Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Students” with Milena Minkova and Terence Tunberg), has an excellent series of podcasts on Latin poetry, and I don’t know why I haven’t seen these until now.

Listening to Oedipus’ Self-Blinding, there was a sort of grotesque pleasure in reading the Latin as he gave his translation. But he also includes some notes on meter, and finally reads in Latin.

This is a marked improvement to Arms and the Man, which included just a Latin reading. Thankfully this was improved upon in Quintilian on Pauses in Aeneid 1.1-8, which is exactly what I’ve been looking for in a podcast from a classicist.

So we can add Franchese’s Latin Poetry Podcast to our feed readers alongside the always interesting Classics in Discussion from Warwick.

Here’s hoping that more follow these exempla virtutis.

plus uno maneat perenne saeclo

I see that a new introductory Greek textbook has been reviewed in the BMCR, and the reviewer makes comparisons to Athenaze. But how does it compare with Luschnig? I only ask because I want to see my name in print for a while yet.

The Regions of Ancient Italy

One thing I’d wanted for a long time to help prepare my students to read authentic Latin was a good outline map of Rome that would give them a pedagogically useful way of thinking about the regions of ancient Italy.

It’s been a while since I drew map, but if I recall I based most of it on the full-color map found in Shepherd’s Historical Atlas.

And here’s a PDF of the Regions of Ancient Italy, which can be printed off for your students.

Of course it would be wrong-headed to think about these regions as anything like modern states, and any detailed study of a particular period would necessarily vary from what I’m presenting here, but I think the following is useful, and my students seem to have learned a bit about the regions. We’ll see how well it helps them as we move forward, and can think about various places mentioned in texts as falling within a much more quantifiable map.

When I teach the map I have students first pay attention to some major groups, namely Galli, Etrusci, Latini, Sabelli, et Graeci. Then I talk Roman expansion, have them mark the major areas, and fill-in the gaps.

And here’s your answer key:

Claude Levi-Strauss, R.I.P.

Just saw this on the Classics-L list: Claude Levi-Strauss has died. He lived to be 100. Here is a link to an obituary. The opening:

L’ethnologue et anthropologue Claude Lévi-Strauss est mort dans la nuit du samedi 31 octobre au dimanche 1er novembre à l’âge de 100 ans, selon le service de presse de l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) contacté par Le Monde.fr. Plon, la maison d’édition de l’auteur de Tristes Tropiques, a également confirmé l’information diffusée par Le Parisien.fr en fin d’après-midi. Claude Lévi-Strauss, qui a renouvelé l’étude des phénomènes sociaux et culturels, notamment celle des mythes, aurait eu 101 ans le 28 novembre.

Latest book finds

My hard drive apparently blew up, but it was a school-issued computer, so it didn’t cost me anything but annoyance. However, I do have some fun things to report on a far-from-technical front: amazing book finds that give me some small glimmer of joy as my Phillies let the World Series slip away.

First up we have the How and Wells two-volume commentary on Herodotus in hardcover. This gem cost me all of $2. In the first volume there is an undated newspaper clipping (but the magic of the internet shows us that is the beginning of this piece in the NY Times) about mummified cats as offerings in Egypt, which cites Herodotus. The owner placed the clipping at the appropriate place in Herodotus.

Tucked in the second volume (at page 112, with a beautiful map of Marathon) were two newspaper clippings, the first dated 10/22/83, is an editorial on the origins of the marathon entitled “Falsity: It’s Based on Myth,” by one Philip Winters (‘Philip Winters, a writer, has taught classics and run races.’).

The second, dated 11/5/83, contains two responses, the first by Professor Eugene N. Borza of Penn State. I assume that these volumes belonged to professor Borza, and I promise that they have found a good home.

Next is K.J. Dover’s Greek Word Order which I picked up for $1, but which appears untouched. Well, untouched but for the odd scribblings of a child who whiled away some long time practicing penmanship on the back flyleaf and the dust jacket. Among the many scribbles I can make out the words “food,” “cars,” “big cars,” various attempts at writing “Pep Boys,” and what appears to be a license plate number: FHg-5497. I don’t know who owned the book, but I have a feeling he or she left a bored and hungry child in the car while fetching some car part or other.

The only other clue is an odd ChapStick memo pad sheet with the note “Mem. 3. 8. 10-11,” which I take to be a reference to Xenophon’s Memorabilia. This is followed by a multiplication problem: 25 x 13. No help.

And lastly for this round is J.D. Denniston’s Greek Prose Style (purchased online after reading Michael Gilleland’s recent selection of excerpts from this book which I’ve so long wanted.) This copy previously belonged to professor Michael C. Landreth of the University of Illinois. I recognized the name and soon learned why: the only publication I could find under his name was an article on particle usage in Pindar, and I spent a portion of one summer in graduate school investigating similar constructions in Thucydides, so I’m sure I’d read the article.

Now, there were many more acquisitions, including some great standard works like Momigliano’s Studies in Historiography, and Bowersock’s Hellenism in Late Antiquity, several student editions of Greek and Latin texts (notably a selection of stories from Apuleius), an odd OCT here, a study of the reception of Dante there, but those noted above stood out to me, and I look forward to making use of them for years and years to come.