10 Greek Plays That Are Essential to Any Education

Whether you love Greek history and culture or find it dull beyond words, there’s no denying that classical scholarship has had a big impact on just about every succeeding aspect of Western culture. College students pursuing degrees in fields like history, philosophy, theater, creative writing and art history (among others) will be especially well-served reading these works, as they inspired many other later artists, writers and thinkers and are referenced in numerous ways today– a testament to their enduring power.

But what are the 10 plays?  Find out here:

http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2011/10-greek-plays-that-are-essential-to-any-education/

The Dirty Roman Dozen

This is the title of the lead article in a brand new blog, which has just come on line. The Classical Association blog is featuring Caroline Lawrence’s piece on her favourite dozen artefacts:

“Whenever I visit schools to talk about my books set in Ancient Rome, I often bring along some of my favourite artefacts. Most of these aren’t real antique objects, but convincing replicas made by re-enactor friends or bought in museum gift shops.  But they are close enough to the original to give children a visible, tangible idea of how 1st century Rome from 21^st century Britain. I let the kids look at them, sometimes handle and sniff them, even taste them.  The Roman poet Martial mentions some of these artefacts in his fourteenth book of Apophoreta, poetic Saturnalia gift-tags. ………..

You can catch the rest here

Roman Coin information – or how to do just about everything

I have just come across the eHow Blog, my attention being drawn by a particular item on Roman coinage. The article itself is adequate as a general introduction (despite the erronious dating of the earliest Roman coinage). The real value lies in the “More Articles Like This” section where you can pursue your interest with links to “How to identify Roman Coins”,  ”List of Roman Coins” and much more.

Roman Coin Information

Latin Blog

This is one of a suite of Language blogs from the Transparent Language software company.  Latin Blog has some lively pieces and a good number of video clips from You Tube. Latest post is on Roman theatres. Well worth a look.

Roman attitudes to magic

“Magic, then, was always something secret and illegal; if, in practice, tolerated so long as no scandal occurred”.  So concludes Roger Pearse after a brief but  scholarly review on his blog. In my experience pupils are always fascinated by the subject and listen more readily, and have stronger views about it than many of the topics with which we try to engage them.

Did you know that 

“There were three sets of Roman legislation relating to magic.[1]  There was an edict in the Twelve Tables (ca. 451 BC); the laws of Sulla (81 BC); and the legislation of Constantine and other Christian emperors (after 312 AD).. . . .. . . .?

You can catch the whole article here

http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=2301

audio video disco

This sounds like an excellent name for a Latin blog – and so it is.  

inter alia - a useful piece on birthplaces of Latin authors and …..have a go at improving JM ‘s univocalic lipogrammatic translation of Catullus 85:

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

We detest her, yet we feel glee. Seek ye the key, re: these resentments? We’re rejected, dejected, demented.

and only carp after you have improved on it!

The blog is here:

 http://audio-video-disco.blogspot.com/search/label/Catullus