the CAMPVS

Plotting Ancient Sites pt. 2

Patrick Callahan of Fordham offers an impressive map showing the origins of the Argonauts (and he has taken it a step further with color-coding):

View Argonautika Book 1 Catalogue of Heroes in a larger map

As he notes, “Hasty work, but I wanted to confirm my suspicion that the catalogue was not wholly arbitrary in the order of heroes (they form a map of Hellas, going in geographic order).” That’s exciting stuff.

And I’ve just spent some time putting together a map of Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Laurentum. It still needs work, but it’s a start:

View The Voyage of Aeneas in a larger map

I really have high hopes for this this, and I would love to see some more.

Plotting Ancient Sites with Google Maps

I’m having my Latin IV students read Ovid in translation while we work through Livy in Latin to see a few different perspectives and the way that authors can draw from a range of sources to create markedly different works of literature. I was impressed with Ovid’s densely packed catalogue of mountains in book 2, as he recounted the destruction of Phaethon’s unfortunate ride, and had a go at plotting the mountains.

Ovid’s Catalogue of Mountains (Met. II. 217-26)

View Catalogue of Mountains: Ovid Met. II. 217-26 in a larger map

You’ll definitely want to view the larger size on Google Maps.

Here’s the Latin for good measure:

217. ardet Athos Taurusque Cilix et Tmolus et Oete
218. et tum sicca, prius creberrima fontibus, Ide
219. virgineusque Helicon et nondum Oeagrius Haemus:
220. ardet in inmensum geminatis ignibus Aetne
221. Parnasosque biceps et Eryx et Cynthus et Othrys
222. et tandem nivibus Rhodope caritura Mimasque
223. Dindymaque et Mycale natusque ad sacra Cithaeron.
224. nec prosunt Scythiae sua frigora: Caucasus ardet
225. Ossaque cum Pindo maiorque ambobus Olympus
226. aeriaeque Alpes et nubifer Appenninus.

I then updated an old map I had played around with, plotting the locations of the Pre-Roman settlements according to Vergil: Laurentum, Lavinium, Alba Longa, and finally Rome:

From Aeneas to Romulus

View From Aeneas to Romulus in a larger map

It takes some playing around with and getting used to, but I hope that more people take on projects like this. Perhaps we can organize ourselves and our students to attack certain tasks and post an easily accessible list. Any takers?

MORE:

I’ve just plotted one of my favorite mnemonic devices (and not just because I came up with it) for the Hills of Rome, previously discussed in these very pages:

The 7 Hills of Rome (plus 1)

View The 7 Hills of Rome (plus 1) in a larger map

The map gives you a serpentine visual to accompany the following phrase:

Ianicvlvm
AC Palatinvs
CapitolinvsQVE.

You begin with the Janiculan (the ‘plus 1′), and follow the line till you reach the Esquiline. Only three hills are named (arguably the three most significant for Roman history), while the others are abbreviated as Latin conjunctions. (AC = Aventine & Caelian, QVE = Quirinal, Viminal, & Esquiline.)

Seven Hills Mnemonic

I picked up Robert Harris’s Imperium as a little bedtime reading and as I opened to the map of Republican Rome just before the start of the book my eyes passed over the first letters of Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline. In a flash I’d read them as QVE, and it wasn’t a second before I read the top half of the map as CapitolinvsQVE.

The bottom half gave me AC Palatinvs, but putting these two together in that order didn’t quite work, so I decided to take another tack:

What are the three most important hills in the city’s history?

Ianicvlvm
AC Palatinvs
CapitolinvsQVE.

This has the advantages of (1) requiring students to memorize only three names (while they can more easily recall the others from the abbreviations), (2) using Latin conjunctions for the abbreviations, reinforcing a bit of the language, and (3) being somewhat visual. It gives the Seven Hills and the Janiculan, an important defense across the Tiber, read in a kind of S shape from bottom to top. I can’t help but visualize a map of Rome when I recite this and follow a steady S-shaped trail (Janiculan, then Aventine, Caelian, Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline).

You can also think of the first line as giving what’s west of the Tiber, the second line naming the hills of the southern half of the city, and the third line those of the northern half of the city.

However you break it down, I think it may turn out to be effective and I plan to use it next semester.

UPDATE: 23 February 2010.

I’ve since put this up on Google Maps:

The 7 Hills of Rome (plus 1)

View The 7 Hills of Rome (plus 1) in a larger map

Check out the other posts on the subject of plotting ancient sites with Google Maps

How not to read Latin

I found myself sorely bothered today by technology in classics, but before you write me off as a curmudgeon or a snob hear me out. It won’t take long.

I was reading about a program that purports to help you read classical Latin by parsing words, highlighting syntactic units, offering speech bubbles filled with grammatical information pointing to words and clauses — in short, reading the Latin for you.

I know there’s always been a drive to keep up with the Joneses, where the Joneses are other academic disciplines, particularly in the sciences. It’s been going on longer than I’ve been alive. (I remember seeing an old movie as a kid and being puzzled about the conflict faced by the humanities professor whose son had turned to the dark side of math, i.e., science, with which his impractical discipline was ever at odds.)

Anyway, that’s no reason to dispense with the time-honored tradition of actually learning how to read Latin. I can hear you saying, ‘but this software will help students to learn grammar better and to read sooner!’ But it won’t.

As it is we’re already too dependent upon commentaries. This indicates that we produce translators of Greek and Latin rather than readers. And they’re not even passable translators. Why would a person fully capable of walking with a little effort choose to rely on so many crutches?

Teach grammar properly and your students won’t require linguistic calculators.

On a related note I’ve been annoyed lately by the number of teachers who write to a certain mailing list with the most inane questions easily answered by reaching for a grammar or a dictionary. These posts are invariably followed up by a half dozen or so well-intentioned guesses by other teachers who haven’t thought to look it up elsewhere than their Dick and Jane textbook of choice.

Of course I’m being unfair, and of course a lot of meaningful discussion takes place. And of course some people do post references to good grammars.

But the numbers are against them, and teachers who’ve learned Latin poorly will continue to teach it poorly and will fail to impart to their students any deep familiarity with the tools at their disposal.

They’ll just keep on sneaking peeks at translations when their commentaries, cd-roms, and pocket dictionaries fail them.