This head has been bought by the Louvre. I think it's a good piece, and useful for comparison with the Parthenon horses.   more »

A simple thing, but until you've found out by experience you don't think about it. What am I talking about? See Hilary's short entry on the Notice Board.   more »

For some time David ran an excellent website for his Classics department. He is now moving to another school and is generously adapting his departmental site to be a sample site which other Classics teachers can use for ideas and inspiration in making their own sites.

The index page to David's site is here.

If you prefer to visit the departmental site directly, try this.

I haven't checked ....   more »

The only language for a common European anthem not likely to arouse rivalry among the different nations is Latin. Moreover, it is a clear and pleasant-sounding language that may well be regarded as the one mother tongue of all Europeans.   more »

Apparently the Classicsal Greek version of the first Harry Potter book is due out this month. The Wall Street Journal gave it a distinctly quizzical, if not downright sarcastic, welcome last Thursday. But at least it's publicity for the book and the language. See what you think.   more »

To go by the sheer number of Greek characters traipsing across our stages right now, the ancients have become our ...   more »

Almost half of Higher exams face being cut under new plans. Many less popular Highers could disappear in a major shake-up of the exam system, BBC Scotland has learned.   more »

If you are thinking of reading St Luke's account of the birth of Christ with your Greek class at the ...   more »

I've just been playing Hungry Frog Latin Vocabulary game and find it fun. You need to visit 'hungry frog options' ...   more »

A lecture by Lynn Sherr given in April 2003 in New Hampshire contains some good ammo for promoting the study ...   more »

"Currently the A.R.L.T. is gearing up to provide teachers, parents and children with materials that will convince them of the value, the benefits and the pleasure of studying Latin" Whoops!! ... A Brian Bishop Broadside.   more »

I don't know how good this course is, but it's on the net and it's free! Find it here.   more »

This dates from 2000, but the site is still there - I stumbled across it just now. I was chiefly interested in the comments that a number of teachers made about Athenaze:   more »

Foursight Theatre are performing Hecuba in the British premiere of the new translation by John Harrison for Cambridge University Press. ...   more »

I'm a sucker for old-fashioned, genteel detective stories, where the murder takes place in a country house or, as in tonight's episode of Rosemary and Thyme on ITV, in a colonnaded prep school. One of the earliest scenes showed a Latin lesson in progress, and my heart sank. It was surely going to be the Latin teacher who turned out to be a twisted sadist and did the murder.

Lo and behold, ...   more »

An article in today's Education Guardian is all about the success of a Scottish e-learning university. Has anyone got experience of this? Is there anything we can pick up and use in our own field, from this initiative which has 75,000 students?   more »

"Tomlinson's diploma is expected to chose between 15 to 20 areas of learning, broadly grouped under humanities, arts, sciences, health and social care. Subjects such as Urdu and Arabic, whihch many students think are more relevant to the modern world than learning French will be offered" -- 'The Observer', 17/10/04.   more »

On the effect of films about the ancient world:

"They can always come along and get the real story from us later," says Associate Professor Dexter Hoyos, of Sydney University's Department of Classics and Ancient History. "It's if we don't get them in the first place that we have problems. And so far we haven't had any students coming to us after their first year saying it's not like it was in Gladiator."   more »

I didn't know what to expect, the morning I followed the brown 'heritage' signs to Danebury Iron Age hillfort.

I had just returned from Greece on an overnight flight and was driving west on the A 303 when I realised I was going to fall asleep at the wheel. That was when I spotted the brown sign, and got safely off the main road. It was further from the A303 than I had expected, but when I got there I found Danebury a delight. Mind ...   more »

I was following up a news item mentioned in today's Explorator when I came across Weymouth and Portland Council's page all about the Romans. Cheerfully illustrated, this page lists Roman sites in the area to visit.

The same page of Google came up with the English Heritage collection of guides for teachers.    more »

Notes on chapters 2 to 5 are now in the Teachers' Section of the ARLT web site. Please comment.   more »

TEACHING unions formed a united front yesterday against introducing new methods of fast-tracking experienced teachers who wish to transfer from the private to the state sector.

England lacks 3,500 mathematics teachers in its secondary schools. But in spite   more »

The latest Sunday Times had a piece about independent schools helping with new city academies. I append some of the article. It just occurs to me that this could be a way of bringing the Classics to some state schools, who are apparently to be freed from sticking to the National Curriculum. Is there any Classics teacher whose school has been asked to help! If so, say what you think can be done. Use this blog if it helps.   more »

Without comment a link to today's Times:

Times Online - Britain   more »

David Swift reminded me a few days ago that some time ago I collected a page of links to wonderful photos from space of a volcano erupting (Mount Etna) and of Greece, Sirmio and so on. It's rather tucked away on my site, so here's a link to it:   more »

I gather from one or two teachers that there is not much help available for teaching Livy Book 30 for As and A2 levels. I have begun to write notes on the prescribed passages. I have done only chapters 2 (set for A2) and 3 so far, but I should like to know whether these notes are going to be helpful or not.   more »

It is cold comfort, but Latin and Greek are not the only subjects being squeezed by Micky Mouse subjects at GCSE level.

"Numbers taking languages at GCSE have gone into freefall. To take just one exam board: in 2002, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) had 73,000 candidates for GCSE French. By 2003, that number had declined to 55,000, and this year was down still further, to just 46,000." I quote from   more »

The Times, Guardian etc today report the strange case of the Maths teacher and Headmaster of 30 years' experience who can't teach in a state school.

As the Guardian puts it:   more »

"Without Latin, people are handicapped because they do not understand their past, and cannot therefore effectively plan their futures". - Michael Grant, who died last Monday aged 89.   more »

"I decided to major in Latin to be, well, different. An English major sounded so predictable. And the classics department at Vassar drew an interesting group of people ... cool in a way that you wouldn't have anticipated."   more »

The Iliad and The Odyssey were the first and second bestsellers among poetry at Amazon.com   more »

It would have been easy to update Euripides' Bacchae by drawing parallels with today's binge-drinking culture, perhaps casting Pentheus, the killjoy Theban king who refuses to acknowledge the divinity of Dionysos � and pays dearly for his arrogance by being torn to pieces by his own mother � as a Blunkett-like moral guardian.

But the Cornish company Kneehigh doesn't stoop to anything predictable or crass in its retelling of a story whose continuing relevance is all too apparent.   more »

Naturally you have a note of where the chariot race sequence in your departmental video of Ben Hur starts, and you get it out when you reach the topic of the Circus Maximus. Here is an addition, from the Discovery Channel website, and also a page of mosaics etc of the races:    more »

I pass on, in case anyone would like to follow it up, this link to an Austrian Classics teachers' society, with the rest of the e-mail I received:

I have been led to the following site which, alhough entirely in German, seems quite active   more »

You can win yourself one of the Cambridge Latin Course DVDs by visiting Guardian Education here and merely sending them a blank e-mail.   more »

Under the title "Coming of Age in Ancient Greece" a site shows a collection of pots, toys and other artefacts to do with children.

Another page on the same site gives links to large collections of quotations from ancient authors on nine different aspects of childhood, including child development, education, toys and games, rituals.   more »

Will Griffiths on Latin in the Guardian: In a recent survey of those who are 'e-students', 83.9% said the interactive exercises supported them in their learning of the language and 70.4% said that they would like to continue for a second year - even though the course would be extra-curricular.

These students don't all live in leafy suburbs. Last week I heard from a teacher in Lambeth who found she had 57 applicants for her newly-advertised Year 7 Latin class.   more »

Martin Stephen, who is chairman of the Headmasters� and Headmistresses� Conference (HMC), proposed a standing commission of employers, universities, teachers and parents to decide changes to secondary schools. It would be comparable to the Bank of England�s Monetary Policy Committee, which sets interest rates. Government would be relegated to paying for its recommendations.

He said that the education system had suffered so much upheaval under recent governments that it now resembled �a wound operated on so often that all that is left is scar tissue�.   more »

I've printed out October 2004 and stuck it on my fridge door, and will post a photo of it. It has the days of the week, the Roman date, and Roman festivals. I chose the female entertainer as my picture, though I could have had photos, if I'd used my colour printer, or amusing quotations. Judge the taste of your students, and print accordingly.

Every Classics classroom should have one!   more »

The Royal Shakespeare Company is presenting Hecuba in London with Vanessa Redgrave.   more »

The Classics students in an American school submitted this article to their local paper, and it was printed - and made available world-wide through the web version.   more »

The site called 24 Hour Museum reports on a dig at Corbridge which has been going on for some time, but for the first time, as far as I know, they have pictures:   more »

The ARLT website has recently added a link to 'Vita Latinitatis', a collection of links to living Latin sites.   more »

Note: Audio files have been re-located. The audio index page on the ARLT website leads to all the available recordings.   more »

A reading in Latin of Catullus poem 1 is here.   more »

Despite Peter Jones' public optimism, the writing is on the wall -- or rather in the figures.

If A.R.L.T., J.A.C.T., C.U.C.D. do nothing,then we might as well pack up and go home.

It is not in our nature to agitate: we are, after all, teachers and our business is with our immediate charges.   more »

People have been asking about help with teaching the Livy 30 prescription, so you will now find the Section A chapters set out in parallel columns of Latin and English, matched as far as possible short phrase by short phrase. If you add a bit of reading aloud (by the teacher) while the students follow either the English (at first) or the Latin, I believe you will find they will learn quite quickly. I've used the method successfully myself.

Brian Bishop has kindly contributed some notes he has written for students preparing for their A level literature paper.   more »